To Be Expected

What happens when you discard all other activities and focus on one solitary goal? Why, something gets accomplished, of course!

I've been so consumed with this mtDNA test challenge: to find the nexus with my "exact match" mystery cousin. Of course, it didn't hurt any that he had the opportunity, last week, to travel to meet a number of relatives in his extended family—people he may only have seen last, within days of his birth. He's come away from that visit with a list of possible names to help build out that family tree a few more generations. Maybe, just maybe, all it will take might be pushing the envelope back just those one or two generations more.

In the meantime, I've stepped up my game as well. In the past two weeks, it seems I couldn't do anything else but work on my maternal tree. (And you thought the only reason I was posting those B-ball pics from a hundred years ago was for the curiosity of the uniforms...)

I will be getting back to that matrilineal research saga next week. But first, of course, it's time for a little accountability in the form of those bi-monthly stats.

It will be no surprise to learn that, thanks to all that focus, I've come to a virtual stand-still on the other trees I've been researching. So, that means zero progress on my paternal line (still standing at 150 names in the tree and, regrettably, zero DNA contacts). Same thing goes for both of my husband's lines (his maternal side toes the line at 2,375 individuals and his paternal line languishes at the same 917 names it's been holding with since the middle of October, neither with any advances on the DNA matching front).

On the other hand, all eggs were put into that one basket, so to speak, propelling the count in my maternal tree to 6,137 names, an advance in the last two weeks of 272 additional entries—all, incidentally, duly confirmed with multiple forms of documentation, thanks to the accessibility of online researching programs.

What's been really exciting—which I'll explain in more detail next week—is that much of what I've uncovered was a branch of the family whose migratory path passed through Kentucky, the very same location to which my adoptee cousin's family history has led him. I hadn't even thought there was a possibility of a connection there, as none of my oral family history stories had mentioned anything of family being in Kentucky, but when you realize the path to confirm mtDNA results is not necessarily the same as pursuing the direct line of one's own family history, it begins to make more sense. What matters in this case is the divergent path of two sisters, somehow placed on the trajectory of the mother's mother's mother's line. Any daughter on that line can be the beginning of an entirely different family history than the one passed down in my own family's story. As long as it includes a biological connection between a mother and daughter—repeated down through the ages—it will still allow a very specialized sort of cousin matching to take place.

Let's just hope the connection occurs before we run out of genealogical documentation resources...